Fox is expanding their commitment to combat sports beyond the UFC, with Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions announcing a new deal with Fox. In addition to shows on Fox Sports and Fox Sports Desportes, it looks like Fuel will air one live boxing show each month.
Here’s a tweet from Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated:
This looks similar to the NBC Sports deal with Main Events that has produced some very nice mid-level (above ESPN 2’s Friday Night fights and ShoBox, below HBO/Showtime Championship Boxing) cards.
It’s entirely possible that this is also a move to get a big boxing show on Fox. Golden Boy promotes Floyd Mayweather fights since Floyd’s “Mayweather Productions” isn’t actually a “promoter” but it’s highly unlikely that something on the level of Mayweather could be put on Fox.
A big name Golden Boy fighter like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez isn’t quite ready to draw big PPV numbers on his own yet, so I wouldn’t put it past Fox and Golden Boy to work out a deal to put someone like Canelo on the flagship network occasionally. But that’s all speculation on my part.
What I think we can see is that Boxing is far from dead with HBO Championship Boxing, Boxing After Dark, Showtime Championship Boxing, ShoBox, Friday Night Fights, Main Event on NBC Sports, talk of a new show on Spike and now Fuel picking up events.
It will be interesting to get more details on the kind of budget the Fuel show will work with and what level of fighters Golden Boy puts on the cards.
A full list of fighters Golden Boy promotes can be read on their website.